


I dreamt a dream of life

by Winterstar



Category: White Collar
Genre: Drug Use, Major Canon Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4125342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>: This is the <a href="http://bessemerprocess.dreamwidth.org/213373.html?thread=1141373#cmt1141373"> reverse remix</a> of the erlhairhodan’s surrealistic fic <a href="http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/195040.html">Out of Memory and Time</a> Neal finds a way out of the nothingness of the afterlife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I dreamt a dream of life

Title: I dreamt a dream of life  
Author: dmk0064/winterstar  
Rating: PG13  
Genre: hurt comfort  
Pairings: Neal/Elizabeth/Peter  
Warnings: drug use, major canon character death  
Summary: : This is the [ reverse remix](http://bessemerprocess.dreamwidth.org/213373.html?thread=1141373#cmt1141373) of the erlhairhodan’s surrealistic fic [Out of Memory and Time](http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/195040.html) Neal finds a way out of the nothingness of the afterlife.

  
Neal starts smoking weed about three years after he died. He isn’t sure that the others understand that it is even possible, he’s not even sure it is possible. He calls his kind – if that is indeed what they are – the others. He feels a part from them, not within their maudlin circle of lifelessness.

So, he starts to smoke. It isn’t difficult to find, he just walks into a random house one day, rifled through the drawers and found it. He laughs when he can actually smoke it; he settles and relaxes when it works through his non-existent nerves.

He isn’t supposed to exist, to be here. Physicality is not a blessing he possesses. He decides sometime during the long passages of time that he has been cursed. To be so close to that other place, that other life yet not remember it all, not knowing but fragments, tells him that being what he is now is just a cosmic joke at his expense.

It isn’t hard to progress from marijuana to the harder stuff. Lifting from a drug dealer doesn’t take nimble fingers because an angel only touches the wind with wings and nothing more. He makes nice neat lines with the cocaine on the edge of the bridge. Plucking a feather from his wing, he uses the shaft to sniff it up. He lets the drug take him. Since there are no consequences, no god from on high coming down to smite him, Neal abandons the cocaine and follows the course to uglier things, pipes and injections.

The others, the angels condemned to this world turn away from him, ignore him and his night flights, his drug induced murmurings. He realizes as he sits on the bridge overlooking the waters below, that his obsession with drugs funnels down to the idea of death and life. This place, this in-between existence, has little to no meaning. He needs meaning.

So, he decides.

He lifts his wings in one heavy swoop and skirts the zenith of the sky like Icarus and the sun. It is nearly dawn as he circles down and he finds his place. He settles on floor in their bedroom, watching his ‘once life’ slumber. Taking hold of the vials, he injects himself with a long steady stream of drugs. It is a cocktail he’s sure that would kill any human being. What kills an angel, he does not know. He wants to believe it will end him.

His hands shake, and his wings flutter about him in tiny tremors, each feather like a limb of its own. As tears form in his eyes, Neal knows the drugs are just an imagining of his imagined afterlife. As he realizes this, the vials, the needles, the syringes disintegrate in his grasp and he cries out.

It is a low weeping wail. No one hears him, no one can.

Until someone does.

“Jesus, El,” Peter says and he’s pushing at Elizabeth’s shoulder, jostling her awake.

Neal hitches in a breath, staggering to try and stand, to break away from them.

“Peter? What?” Elizabeth gasps and brings a hand to cover her mouth as she gazes upon Neal.

He stands still, his wings his only shroud against their prying eyes. They are with him then, touching him, caressing him, and it burns. It sizzles and sears away at what is left inside of him until the pain blossoms outward and quavers through him. He is incandescent in their arms; flames of light and dark engulf them as he encircles them with his wings.

They touch him everywhere then, their hands are soft, and urgent, and loving, and aching. He yields in every way, gives them every part of who he was, who he is. As they devour him, he offers what more he has, the pitiful existence and they accept it.

He succumbs then to the night, to the suddenness of the abyss, knowing it is them who took him and not all the cruelty of the world.

THE END  



End file.
